{"product_id":"how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves","title":"How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA vital testament to how art makes us who we are--and offers new ways of seeing our world and our lives. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBarbara Kruger once defined art as \"the ability to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.\" Testing that claim, \u003ci\u003e How It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e braids criticism with personal narrative to consider art's intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen Megan O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. At the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. As a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLooking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made--often drawing on personal conversations with the artists--O'Grady examines the work's rippling impact, implicating sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imaginations and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does it offer? A vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to rethink all that we take for granted, \u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e inspires and exhorts, providing a template to think through the knottiest problems in our culture, our selves, and the connections between the two.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 037461332X\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780374613327\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: O'Grady, Megan\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Apr 2026)","offer_id":46081720418501,"sku":"9780374613327","price":37.7,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780374613327.jpg?v=1776048674","url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/products\/how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}